A KITT that drove David Hasselhoff between concerts, TV studios and promotional events across Europe in the late 80s and early 90s is up for auction in Zürich on Saturday 7 November, and Broad Arrow expects it to sell for between CHF 250,000 and CHF 500,000, which Top Gear works out at roughly £227,000 to £454,000. That's a lot of money for a 1982 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am with a 165bhp V8 that you can't legally drive on the road, but what you're buying is the story, and this car has a better one than most.
Where did this Knight Rider KITT come from?
It started life as a US-market Trans Am, imported by Peter Malek of Vienna for Profile Promotions, the company run by Hasselhoff's representative at the time, and was turned into KITT by Thomas J Oberhaus of Hollywood Productions, working from Universal's original plans for the TV car (the Spanish site Periodismo del Motor has been through the paperwork). Its conversion certificate is dated 29 December 1989, two days before Hasselhoff sang at the Berlin Wall on New Year's Eve, which gives you a fair idea of how big he was in that part of the world at the time.
Knight Rider historian AJ Palmgren, who inspected the car in Switzerland in 2007, says it was built for Hasselhoff's Night Rocker tour of Austria, and its papers show it went on to appear at concerts, TV shows and exhibitions all over Europe, including Swiss television in November 1990. Broad Arrow describes it as an exact replica of the TV car, built to the same specification as the star car, and it's the full 80s fantasy inside, with yellow velour seats, the gullwing steering wheel, pop-up headlights and a dashboard covered in scanners.
Was the Knight Rider KITT stolen?
Yes, at least according to its history. A Swiss record company, Exclusa AG, bought the car at the end of 1990, and while it owned it the KITT was reportedly stolen in Italy and later recovered by Interpol, minus its dashboard electronics. The current owner has had it since October 1999, and it's been checked over and confirmed as Hasselhoff's car by the Knight Rider Historians, a group of fans who keep track of the surviving cars.
Whoever buys it also gets a boot full of memorabilia, including photographs of Hasselhoff with the car, and an archive of documents covering its time on tour.
How much is a Knight Rider KITT worth?
The best benchmark we have is the Hoff's own car. Hasselhoff sold his personal KITT replica, a different car that had been kept in Britain, in an online auction in January 2021, and it went for $300,000, or about £220,000 at the exchange rate of the time. So the bottom of this car's estimate is roughly what his own KITT made five years ago, and the top is about double.
The 2021 car had the man himself as the seller (he even offered to deliver it in person), which is hard to beat for a fan. This one can't match that, but it has three decades of paperwork, a starring role in his European tours and an Interpol case file, and it's being sold by a big auction house at a major sale.
What we like
• It has paperwork going back to 1989, including its conversion certificate and Swiss customs papers, which is rare for a tour car.
• It's tied directly to Hasselhoff at the peak of his fame in Europe, and that link has been verified by people who know these cars inside out.
• It comes with a boot full of memorabilia, which is the sort of thing that makes a display car worth looking at.
What worries us
• It isn't road legal, so it'll spend its life on a trailer or in a showroom.
• It's a tour car built to look like KITT, and not one of the cars used on screen.
• The theft cost it its original dashboard electronics, so some of what you see inside has been put back since.
If the KITT has got you thinking about the cars you grew up with, and whether the one on your own drive has held its value, get a free car valuation with Regit and find out what it's worth today.
Our verdict on the Knight Rider KITT auction
We'd expect it to clear the bottom of the estimate comfortably, because a documented Hasselhoff car with a story like this doesn't come up often, but £454,000 looks a stretch for a replica that can't be driven on the road. Our guess is a hammer price somewhere around £300,000, which would put it comfortably ahead of the Hoff's own car and make it just about the most expensive way imaginable to own a 1982 Trans Am. We'll update this page with the result after the sale.